Making sure you give credit to the correct online marketing channel is crucial. If you credit an email marketing campaign for a conversion when the customer actually came from a Google Ad, then you might decide to turn off the Google Ad at some point.
Crediting the correct online channel can be complicated. Let’s say someone clicks on a Facebook Ad to arrive at your site, then leaves and comes back later via a Google search. It would be unfair to give all of the credit to the Google Search; at least some of the credit needs to go to the ad. Right?
Google Analytics credits the conversion to the last click, specifically the last non-direct click. This ignores the role played by the Facebook ad in this example.
So how do we make sure that credit is given to the correct online channel? Well there are a couple of routes:
Multi channel conversion report
This report within Universal Analytics will show the entire user journey from initial engagement through to conversion. It is important to gauge the difference between the first click channel and the last click channel as this shows the depth of the journey undertaken by the customer.
Channel specific conversion tracking
Some paid channels have implemented tracking codes which allow the tracking of visitors’ engagement with their ads. In Google this is their conversion tracking code and in Facebook it’s their pixel and conversion api. This code allows the advertiser to allocate credit to the ad based on a number of criteria.
Which method should I use?
As online marketers we need to have access to as much data as possible to help us make correct decisions. We therefore recommend that the Google Analytics last click conversions are measured in one table and channel specific conversions in another. Over time this data can be interpreted to make better decisions. It is also extremely important to allow accurate measurement of paid channels, particularly where an agency has been appointed to manage these channels.
table59 specialises in the installation of the above mentioned tracking systems, the construction of dashboards and the interpretation of results.
